I am gay. What can I do to stay in God’s grace and live a full, happy life as a gay man?

There is only one type of salvation: generously cooperating according to the circumstances of a person’s life with God’s unique gift of salvation through Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection.

A number of my Protestant friends who have studied Greek use grape juice at their communion service. Why does the Catholic Church use wine?

The Catholic and Orthodox Churches use wine because the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke indicate that Jesus used “the fruit of the vine ” at the Last Supper. That probably meant wineÑat least, that is how these Churches understood those texts for almost 1,500 years before the religious ancestors of your friends started to use grape juice.

I was taught that prior to Christ’s dying and rising, people (in the Old Testament) could not enter heaven and see God. What about Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and the many holy women in the Old Testament?

You have identified a theological dilemma: how to speak about people who lived before Jesus as being saved without slighting the unique role of his passion, death, and resurrection. The concept of limbo was developed to cover this group of people, plus babies who die before BaptismÑand ultimately good adults who were never baptized.

Do you remember when you were younger, and friends used to ask if you “liked ” someone? I mean “liked ” in the sense that you thought that person was cute and more than just a friend. At that stage, liking someone seemed to be the starting point from which loving relationships blossomed.

Then, at some point, the concept of liking someone quit being the go-to emotion anymore. Suddenly, it was all about love and all the warm, fuzzy feelings that entailed. Liking someone wasn’t enough. Love was what it was all about.